These days we hear it being shouted from the rooftops – if you are in business, you must engage in social media marketing. Few organizations worth their salt have considered and subsequently dismissed social media as a new aid for marketing and as the spectrum continues to improve we are seeing reports and software solutions designed to convince us that we are on the right track.
During the tail end of last year, analysts Altimeter Group revealed a report that ranked the top 100 global brands in terms of both their financial success and their related levels of engagement across a variety of social media channels. We are talking about some heavyweight companies here – Toyota, Samsung, Motorola, IBM, Amazon, eBay, Disney and so on.
The report found a direct correlation between levels of engagement and financial success. The organization maintains that its report, which you can access here, will give any business a good idea how best to approach its social marketing from this direction.
One of the main findings suggests that a broader and deeper level of engagement is important, rather than a tendency to spread corporate reserves and resources too thinly to try and reach the appropriate audiences. It was also concluded that each social media channel provides a different dimension of engagement and should be approached independently.
You might think that an approach should be rather different for a smaller organization and that it is all very well for the top 100 global brands to claim success as their name recognition is already high. If so, then a start up software package developed by developer Social Agency out of Austin, TX may be worth investigation. The company has come up with a package called Spredfast, which helps companies to manage their social media efforts. The clever software is able to analyze how people interact through a variety of social media platforms and how they respond to blogs hosted within different blogging platforms. Those comments, updates, retweets and clicks are all quantified.
Free versions are available and paid versions suitable for companies with multiple platforms and users. Spredfast allows content planning and dissemination options and an organization can use the feedback generated to modify a particular marketing plan accordingly.
For those who are still unsure about the way forward, Spredfast plans to launch a product pulling on the experience of organizations across different industry classifications. Their new interface will pose a variety of questions and suggest alternatives based on the specific responses.
Convinced about your social media approach yet?
Adam Toren
